As we discussed in Part 1 of this post, marketing success is not defined solely by how high you rank in Google’s organic results. But why can’t you make Google ranking your top marketing priority? Quite simply, trying to rush into first place on Google will ultimately set you up to fail.
No, it’s not a bad thing to want to be number one! But here are examples of a few expectations that are unrealistic and harmful to your marketing strategy:
1. You want to be number one tomorrow.
The only way to do rank number one in a matter of days is to spam the search engines by doing things such as repeating a keyword or phrase over and over again in your content and media. There are other black hat SEO techniques some people still offer as a service, but we don’t do this at Imagebox because it will negatively affect your website quality overtime, if not immediately. It’s very important for site quality to write for human beings who will be using your site. We will discuss Google’s penalties for such spam later on in this blog. Ranking in the top 10 Google results could take months or years, so don’t get impatient after day one.
2. You want to rank number one for everything related to your business.
You can’t rank number one for every keyword. There might be a lot of competition for many of the words you want to “own,” so it’s more worth it to focus on a few aspects of your business you want to promote more and make sure you have a healthy (well-populated, but not excessive) amount of those keywords on pages where you talk about that topic. Ranking for a couple of words is a more realistic expectation, but you still may have to settle for just being in the top 10 results – places 2-10 still generate a ton of traffic!
3. You want to rank without producing content
You’ve chosen the top words and phrases you want to rank for, but your content doesn’t reflect those areas of your business and you’re not posting in a blog or on social media. If you aren’t regularly producing content that answers people’s questions when they search for you and interacting with your audience on social media, you don’t have a good chance of coming up on the first page of Google.
When you do produce content and have an active social media presence, that increases the chances that people will link to your content and share it online – inbound links are valuable to your site quality and search ranking. Again, it could take months and even years of producing high-quality, engaging content before you see your business move into the top search results.
4. You want to disregard Google updates and resulting penalties
Maybe you understand that these ranking in the top of Google results takes time, but maybe you still want it done today. Just remember that you can’t forget about quality – getting that top result and bringing people to your website doesn’t make much of a difference if your site doesn’t contain information that will convince people to buy into your product or service. On top of that, Google penalizes websites that they find are still trying to trick their way into the top of Google results. Yes, there are ways to trick the search engines temporarily, but wouldn’t you like to work a little harder to dominate them permanently?
The point is that if you want to stay in Google’s good graces, but you also want your business on the first page within a few days, you won’t be satisfied with your marketing team. And if you want to take the black hat route, you surely won’t be happy when Google busts you and knocks you down in the search engine rankings. The best bet? Invest in a solid content marketing strategy and build a trusted brand to earn your rightful place in the top Google results.